Um, no, I didn’t mean “thanksgiving,” and the 353,000,000 results you provided — on the history of the holiday, recipes, crafting ideas, NFL football game schedule, etc. — based on my “thanks, giving” query were not what I was looking for.

Switch over to Google Images with the same query and a similar thing happens. Google can’t conceive of any reason why those two words, separated by a comma, shouldn’t be answered by anything other than turkeys, live turkeys, dead and roasted turkeys, cartoon turkeys both alive and dead, turkeys wearing pilgrim clothing, pumpkins, fall foliage, and an infinite number of greeting card-esque platitudes.

But, I did find a way out of the Thanksgiving Infinite Feedback Loop.

Type in “put the giving in thanksgiving” — because, you know, humans love humorous puns, like “he put the fun in dysfunctional” — and with it Google finds all kinds of well-intentioned content on the interwebs titled Put the Giving in Thanksgiving.

There’s been volumes and volumes written on the virtues of gratitude, and there is a LOT of merit and a time and place for the practice of thankfulness.

But, on this Thanksgiving Eve I feel compelled by some awful stuff happening in the world to focus on the second word in the compound word that is Thanksgiving.

Just a few examples:

I’ve donated some money to my Native American brothers and sisters to aid in their fight for their rights and our planet at Standing Rock, and I plan to donate more.

When you tie your behavioral change to a specific date, you rob yourself of an opportunity to fail and recover, to “fail better.” If you believe that you can only change on the New Year — the inherent message of New Year’s resolutions — you will have to wait a whole year before you get another shot…

My concern is that the resolution takes the place of the action, as is also true with so many millions of people who sign up for an endless succession of self-help programs: They think some magic words, some avowed promise, will magically transform their lives, when we all know that the real transformational work is tough, grueling, and usually involves sacrifice and unpleasant choices.”

I’m sorry, I just don’t see the making of resolutions and “real transformational work” as being mutually exclusive, and yet Salerno and Lamb-Shapiro base their entire argument on this being the case.

Read carefully, it seems to me that Lamb-Shapiro’s piece doesn’t actually support the sensationalist claim that resolutions are bad for you, as much as it points out that it’s how you go after trying to achieve your resolutions that matters the most.

It’s self-serving — they both have written books criticizing the so-called self-help industry — and deeply cynical.

Ironically, Lamb-Shapiro concludes, sounding just like the self-help gurus she holds in such contempt:

Here’s a better idea. Instead of listing an abstract goal like “lose weight,” think of specific small steps you can take, every day, that will have the same result. If you fail at any of these small steps — which you inevitably will — brush it off, and realize that failure and recovery is part of any process.

I believe that it is an inherently good thing that people live intentionally, set goals, and work toward personal growth, and it’s even a deeply optimistic thing that people continue to make resolutions despite an 8% success rate.

So, great ideas, Jessica! Very helpful! Thanks for giving me a better chance of achieving my New Year’s resolutions!

I’ll be with the family, celebrating the holiday that isn’t Hanukkah, for the next few days, and I may not be able to post anything new until the 28th or 29th.

In the meantime, if you’re so inclined, please feel free to browse around here in any of the following ways:

Tags: In the sidebar, under Stuff About…, you can click on any of the Tags and see all the posts I’ve done that have at least something to do with those topics.

Recurring Series: At the top of the page, hover over the Recurring Series drop-down menu and select from options like Celebrating Progress, which applauds businesses adopting sustainable practices; Eyecatchers, a collection of photos, graphics, and videos that have, well, caught my eye; Video Fridays, my favorite video of the week pick; and more.

Archives: Towards the bottom of the sidebar, select a specific month to see everything I posted in that time period.

Hanukkah celebrates a miracle at the ancient Temple on a night when the Jews thought they had only enough oil to light the candles for that one evening. To their delight, the oil lasted eight miraculous nights, and that’s why foods cooked in oil are a common part of the Hanukkah observance…

American Jews eat fried potato pancakes (latkes), but in Israel, Jews celebrate with a different oily, fried food — doughnuts. I’ve brought these two customs together to create a new sandwich: the Hanukkah Miracle.

Here’s how you make it: Slice a glazed yeast doughnut in half and fry it in butter. Flip it inside out, spread sour cream on the bottom and applesauce on the top, and insert a potato pancake. (You want the sour cream closer to your tongue to accentuate its flavor.)

Now, I grew up in a latke household, and what Mr. Pashman doesn’t explain is that latkes are usually served with applesauce and sour cream. And, while I LOVE this, to some, bizarre combination of ingredients, the thought of stuffing those three elements between a glazed doughnut that has been fried in butter…

…yeah, here comes the nausea.

I do recommend you check out Dan’s piece at NPR.org, although with one more warning: it contains a graphic photo depicting his 4-year old daughter consuming the Hanukkah Miracle.

Like this:

Listen, I’m not a Left Brain person. When I look at bank statements, Excel spreadsheets, those huge lighted signs at the airport showing flight numbers and departure and arrival times, my head goes all fuzzy, like it’s filled with cotton balls, my eyes cross, and the numbers seem float up from the surface and scramble. (I wouldn’t call it dyslexia, though, because I got an A in Statistics at Rutgers in 1988. Chuckle, chuckle.)

Anyway, if it weren’t frustrating enough to do things like payroll at work or balancing a checkbook, there’s the whole numbers and time and calendars thing, which Wikipedia attempts to make clear:

The Julian calendar was used in Europe at the beginning of the millennium, and all countries that once used the Julian calendar had adopted the Gregorian calendar by the end of it. So the end date is always calculated according to the Gregorian calendar, but the beginning date is usually according to the Julian calendar (or occasionally the Proleptic Gregorian calendar).

Crystal clear, huh?

As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I’ve been reading all these Best Of lists, not just for 2009, but also lists of what folks consider the Best Of the first decade of the 21st Century.

And as I think about this, my Right Brain orientation doesn’t want to trust my subordinate Left Brain when it screams out that it’s a bit premature to declare an end to the first decade of the 21st Century.

I’m reminded of similar brain hemisphere confusion in the run-up to January 1, 2000. The Y2K Bug hype was in the air and much of the world seemed determined to celebrate the coming of 2000 as the beginning of the Second Millennium. After all, 2000 is such a nice round number, isn’t it? It’s just so Second Millennium-ish!

Question: I’m 17 years old. I’d like to know when the new millennium starts. Isn’t it Jan 1st, 2001? Why do people get excited about 2000 then? How can I explain this to my friends? Please help.

Answer: You are right that the millennium starts on Jan 1st 2001. There is no year zero, so the first millennium started on January 1, 1 C.E., the day after December 31, 1 B.C.E. The first millennium ended 1000 years later, on the night of Dec 31, 1000/morning of Jan 1, 1001, and the second millennium ends 1000 years after that, on Dec 31 2000/Jan 1 2001.

The main reason people will celebrate the millennium on the night of Dec. 31 1999 is to hold big parties, and to hold them a year sooner than they would otherwise. I expect that, around February, 2000, people will start coming around to the belief that the millennium does indeed start with 2001, and plan their next party accordingly.

By the same highly educated reasoning, this would mean that the first decade of the 21st Century doesn’t end until January 1, 2011.

And so, while I’m happy to have evidence that I can still manage to utilize both sides of my brain, I still intend to party tonight like it’s 2011.

Like this:

So, I was about to start off this post with, “Well, it’s that time of year again…,” but then I took a look at what I wrote on this occasion last year — namely the last post before I mostly disappear into family holiday celebrations for a bunch of days — only to find that a year ago I started my post with, “Well, it’s that time of year again…”

While today is not Christmas Eve, with a weekend gloriously placed between now and the holiday, a whole lot of fun is lined up, fun that will largely keep me away from the computer and therefore away from Fish & Bicycles, for as long as a week.

But dear readers, do not despair! I will be reviving an Out of Office idea from this past summer, the Best of Fish & Bicycles series, whereby, while I’m gone, a favorite post of mine from the archives will be reposted each day.

Oh, I might sneak in a new post here and there, but it’s fun digging through the archives, so I hope you don’t mind indulging me.

And so, I wish everyone who comes across this post very Happy Holidays, a retroactive shout out to my Jewish homies for Chanukah, Solstice today, Christmas on Tuesday, Kwanzaa all next week, the New Year, Mawlid an-Nabi later in January, and any other holidays I’ve left out!